Bartram?s Living Legacy: the Travels and the Nature of the South reprints Bartram?s classic work alongside essays acknowledging the debt southern nature writers owe the man called the ?South?s Thoreau.? The book was nominated for the Georgia Author of the Year Award.

"The ecosystems
that once defined the southern landscape have disappeared, as
though some cataclysmic geological event had simply obliterated
them. We know of them chiefly through William Bartram's Travels
published in 1791. It would be about two centuries before a group
of southeastern writers/naturalists/activists began to survey the
landscape that we are left with, and to think about the
consequences of what has been lost, and the power, beauty, and
richness of what remains. Dorinda Dallmeyer, the editor of this
wonderfully conceived volume, has been at the center of that
group. Her idea of combining the text of the Travels with
reflections by contemporary southern writers is a brilliant one.
Bartram remains an indispensable writer, whose work has been
neglected for too long. Now at last he, his book, and the land he
describes have their champions. Some of the essayists here
focus on Bartram the man, some on Bartram the naturalist, some on
Bartram the writer and artist. And some focus, as he himself had
done, on the landscape and ecology of the South as it now is, and
as it once was.

Some of the essayists in this book I have known and admired for
years; some are entirely new to me. They do not speak with one
voice, or on behalf of any preconceived agenda. But their
contributions, taken all together, indicate that the South now has
its own distinctive tradition of environmental literature.
Bartram, not Emerson, Thoreau, Muir, or John Burroughs, is its
progenitor, and this book, I believe, will come to be seen as its
cornerstone."

Description: Christopher Camuto has four essays in the anthology: "Islands," "Air," "Water," and "Becoming Southern."

Nature writers know that to be fully human is to be engaged with our natural surroundings. Elemental South is a gathering of works by some of the region?s best nature writers?people who can coax from words the mysteries of our place in the landscape and the human relationship to wildness.

Arranged by theme according to the basic elements by which many cultures on earth interpret?earth, air, fire, water?the writings consider our actual and assumed connections in the greater scheme of functioning ecosystems. As we read of bears, ancient magnolias, swallow-tail kites, the serenity of a country childhood, the pleasure of eating real food, the remarkable provenance of ancient pottery shards, and much more, these works lure us deep into the southern landscape, away from the constructs of humanity and closer to a recognition of our inextricable ties to the earth.

The writers are all participants in the Southern Nature Project, an ongoing endeavor founded on the conviction that writing like the kind gathered here can help us to lead more human, profound, and courageous lives in terms of how we use our earth. Some of the featured writers are originally from the South, and others migrated here?but all have honed their voices on the region?s distinctive landscapes.

Book Review #1:"Provides a chorus of voices that blend
harmoniously despite their different geographies, backgrounds, and
styles. By tracing the fault lines and fractures of southern landscapes,
society, and spirit, this anthology helps the South begin to heal
stronger in the broken places."
?Will Harlan, editor of Blue Ridge Outdoors

Book Review #2:"Published 150 years after Thoreau's book, it is another Walden. I shall urge each of my grandchildren to read it." Southeastern Geographer, November 2006

Book Review #3:
"This lush collection of works by members of Southern Nature Project
showcases the idiosyncratic impact of our region?s natural surroundings
on its writers, arguably a stronger influence than the predictable
Southern Gothic theme of family secrets."
?Atlanta Magazine

Book Review #4:"If you like to curl up with a good book on cold winter days and you also love the outdoors, read Elemental South. Each leads us to broader truths through careful observations of our natural surroundings."?Southern Living

Description: A gifted nature writer chronicles the four seasons in the Virginia mountains

Come along with Christopher Camuto for a year of transforming experiences in the shadows of the majestic Blue Ridge Mountains: hunting grouse with his setter through snowbound forests in winter; wading trout streams in spring; closely observing birds and wildlife through summer; exploring the backcountry, cutting wood, and hunting deer in autumn.

Book Review #1:"Camuto is, pound for pound, word for word, the heavyweight champion of southern nature writing."
from Bloomsbury Review

Book Review #2:"In this celebration of a year in the country, Camuto (A Fly Fisherman's Blue Ridge), who lives in a four-room log cabin near the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, meditates on the pleasures of nature and his place in it. Eloquently conveying the joy he takes in finding "the miraculous in the common," he writes of the passing seasons, the ever-changing landscape, and the animals and birds that inhabit the mountains and the 200-acre farm he calls home. He also spends much of his time hunting and fishing-grouse in winter, trout in early spring, deer in fall and early winter-and the hunting theme permeates the book. As he admits, it may seem incongruous that someone who loves nature so much is an avid hunter. But, he says, "Hunting has weighted my time outdoors and clarified a great deal for me, taught me innumerable practical lessons and taken me in certain dreamlike moments through the transcendental concentration of the hunt to contact with what I assume is the sacred pulse of being, my own and that of the game I pursue." Nicely covering the same poetic ground as Ted Kerasote and Rick Bass, Camuto describes days spent in the woods tracking grouse, the details of teaching himself bow hunting, or cleaning deer. Camuto's book holds many attractions: his observations about his world and its delights-the trees, the flowers, the stars, the unexpected sight of deer running through the snow on a moonlit night, the presence of Carolina wrens nesting on his front porch, the smell of newly split wood-are memorable and can hold their own with the best nature writing." from Publishers Weekly

Book Review #3:"The mystery of connection lies at the heart of Hunting from Home . . . The stealthy cadence of Camuto's prose reveals glimpses of his effort to do justice to a place and way of life that often seem just beyond his reach; hunting becomes a metaphor of how to capture the natural within the self and on the page."
?New York Times Book Review
"It is difficult to imagine anyone who walks on the land with greater circumspection and appreciation than Camuto."
?Kirkus Reviews

Book Review #4:"The mystery of connection lies at the heart of Hunting from Home.
. . . The stealthy cadence of Camuto's prose reveals glimpses of his
effort to do justice to a place and way of life that often seem just
beyond his reach; hunting becomes a metaphor of how to capture the
natural within the self and on the page."
?New York Times Book Review

Description: This new edition of A Fly Fisherman's Blue Ridge offers readers a chance to revisit a contemporary classic of fly fishing literature, a book that takes the reader through a year of fly fishing backcountry mountain streams from Pennsylvania to Georgia. Camuto's love of trout fishing is wedded to a keen awareness of both history and nature. Although the author has fished for trout from Oregon to Russia, he still lives in the shadow of the Blue Ridge and still considers its trout streams to be the best rivers he has ever fished.

Book Review #1:"The free-running love of wild trout and trout rivers in these 11 linked articles nearly overflows the cycle-of-the-fisherman's-year structure meant to contain it. Camuto's style is informed by what premier angling essayist Roderick Haig-Brown has described as the "power, grace, and associations" of rivers. From the chill opening piece, "Solstice," on the obsessive joys of fishing in winter, to "Autumn Brown on the Rose," the author carries us down a half-dozen remote wild trout waters of the Shenandoah Valley. The essays draw in the tributaries of the area's rich folklore, complex geology and colonial history--including the evidence of pollution and stress on the watershed--and emerge as a strong voice for real wilderness: "If the mountains can be said to have a consciousness, it is to be found in these trout." Camuto's first book ranks with angling's best by Nick Lyons, Norman McLean and Haig-Brown, and should appeal to a wide naturalist audience." from Publisher's Weekly

Book Review #2:"The author, a writer and photographer who has contributed to Fly Fisherman, Trout , and Sierra magazines, here lovingly describes fly fishing in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where the sport can be pursued while savoring the region's enchanting variety of fauna and flora. In a dynamic but low key series of 11 essays, he weaves a colorful, delicate tapestry of words around his pursuit of the wild trout, placing it in the context of the revolving, kaleidoscopic seasons of nature and giving the reader a new understanding of this magical world. Recommended for any outdoor-lover who appreciates fly fishing and excellent writing." from Library Journal

Book Review #3:"A work of homage to the wild native brook trout."
?The New York Times Book Review

Book Review #4:"The best book about fly-fishing to come along in some years."
?Verlyn Klinkenborg, Fly Rod & Reel

Description: The southern Appalachians encompass one of the most beautiful, biologically diverse, and historically important regions of North America. In the widely acclaimed Another Country: Journeying toward the Cherokee Mountains, Christopher Camuto describes the tragic collision of natural and cultural history embedded in the region. In the spirit of Thoreau?s ?Walking,? Camuto explores the Appalachian summit country of the Great Smoky Mountains?the historical home of the Cherokee?searching for access to the nature, history, and spirit of a magnificent, if diminished, landscape.

As the author takes the reader through old-growth forests and ancient myths, he tells of the attempted restoration of Canis rufus, the controversial red wolf, to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. He details the impact of European occupation, and his meditations on the enduring relevance of Cherokee language, thought, and mythology evoke an appreciation of what were once sacred rivers, forests, and mountains.

Through this attempt ?to catch glimpses of the Cherokee Mountains beyond the veil of the southern Appalachians,? Camuto forges a new consciousness about the complex, conflicted past hidden there and leaves us with an important, thought-provoking book about a haunting American region.

Book Review #1:A respectfully cross-cultural, profoundly appreciative love letter to the southern Appalachians--the Cherokee Mountains--from Camuto. Camuto delves into the landscape to get a glimpse of the past and transcend a present in which ``the possibilities of genuine enchantment continually recede.'' For him, that means deep immersion in the Cherokee way of seeing their homeland (though he's smart enough to realize he'll never truly be able to look with Cherokee eyes). He writes not just of his response to the evergreen woods, but of how he understands the Cherokee to have related to them; not only his take on sacred places, but how they figured in the Cherokee cosmology. Camuto is deeply smitten by this ancient, crumpled terrain. He walks long and hard along aboriginal paths in search of wild encounters; tenders intimate, vivid, timeless descriptions of his days afield; leavens the proceedings with historical narratives, natural histories, ethnologies. He limns the good--the Cherokee language and customs, the reintroduction of the red wolf, the improvisational jazz to be found in a veery's song; and the bad--the savagery and sadism of the European conquest, cultural dismemberment, environmental degradation, pauperization of the land's spirit, the loss of native plants and animals, native ideas and images. Camuto's prose can be tortured (describing a pileated woodpecker's ``scalloped flight, a kind of iambic in the air'') and flagging (``De Soto moved on unmoved''). But for the most part it strides quietly and in awe. He beholds a remnant of old growth (``a diorama a bear would have imagined''), reflects on how the red wolf deepens the woods, relishes the pleasures of a campfire. Camuto is humble enough, nimble enough, to sojourn successfully in these mythopoeic climes, conjuring a place portrait of swarming, satisfying complexity. from Kirkus Reviews

Book Review #2:Hiker, canoer, watcher, listener, and meditator, Camuto observes history and nature in the southern Appalachian Mountains, the former homeland of the expelled Cherokee Indians. Favoring a multilevel, nonchronological format, Camuto extols the magnificence of the land before European contact and laments its appearance today and records in detail the reintroduction to the region of the red wolf. With wildness hemmed into the upper reaches of the Great Smokies, Camuto heads for the heights, where he camps in winter, reducing encounters with humans, and engages in a sensitive reflection on the land and the Cherokees' relationship with it. His inspiration is James Mooney, a government ethnologist from the 1880s who wrote about Cherokee culture, including place-names Camuto sought. As he arrives at these locales, Camuto recalls events, forestry, and wildlife that have retreated to refuges of place or memory. Earnest, wistful, and imbued with the poeticalness of nature, Camuto's work conveys the exhilaration of mountaintops, streams, and predators--and the naturalist's dismay at roads, dams, and tourist traps. from Booklist

Book Review #3:Camuto once again reveals his love for the wilderness of the southern Appalachians, known to many as the Cherokee Mountains. He relates his journeys on foot and by canoe into this biologically diverse country, centered along the summit-line border of North Carolina and Tennessee, in the tradition of such natural history writers as Thoreau and Luna B. Leopold. Inspired by ethnologist James Mooney's 19th-century classic studies of the Cherokees and encouraged by the 1992 restoration of the red wolf (a central figure in Cherokee mythology) to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Camuto writes richly about the relationship of pre-European Cherokee culture to the physical and spiritual beauty of the land and its flora and fauna; seldom are natural and cultural history so beautifully interwoven. His work will be a significant addition to any Native American, regional studies, or natural history collection. from Library Journal

Book Review #4:

"Another Country?s purpose is to reintroduce history and to undo
it, to recover wildness in the Appalachians, in the red wolf, and in the
Cherokee. Christopher Camuto writes with the clear-sightedness and
imaginative reach?both inward and outward?of a poet."
?Verlyn Klinkenborg, Audubon

"Not since Barry Lopez welded landscape and imagination together in Arctic Dreams has a writer so ambitiously attempted to elevate local culture and landscape to universal understanding and insight."
?Orion

Book Review #5:"Not since Barry Lopez welded landscape and imagination together in Arctic Dreams has a writer so ambitiously attempted to elevate local culture and landscape to universal understanding and insight."
?Orion

Description: The Woods Stretched for Miles gathers essays about southern landscape and nature from nineteen writers with geographic or ancestral ties to the region. Christopher Camuto's chapter is entitled "Old Growth."

From the savannas of south Florida through the hardwood uplands of Mississippi to the coastal rivers of the Carolinas and the high mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, the range in geography covered is equally broad. With insight and eloquence, these diverse talents take up similar themes: environmental restoration, the interplay between individual and community, the definition of wildness in an area transformed by human activity, and the meaning of our reactions to the natural world.

Readers will treasure the passionate and intelligent honorings of land and nature offered by this rich anthology. With the publication of The Woods Stretched for Miles, southern voices establish their abiding place in the ever-popular nature writing genre.

Book Review #1:"This is an important book?the first of its kind
exclusively on the Southeast. It should appeal to general readers who
wish to read about the genre in the Southeast, about the long and
complex relationship between American culture and nature, and also about
controversial environmental issues in the region."
?John Murray, editor of American Nature Writing

Book Review #2:"I am delighted with the very concept of this
anthology of Southern nature writing. There are dozens and dozens of
recent scholarly books on environmental literature and anthologies of
nonfiction nature writing, nature poetry, and environmental writing in
general, including a number of regionally oriented collections. But, so
far, other than Molly Westling's ecocritical studies of Southern
fiction, few of these recent publications are explicitly devoted to
Southern environmental literature. For this reason, there is a
significant void that the The Woods Stretched for Miles is intended to fill?and I think it fills the void quite well."
?Scott Slovic, author of Being in the World: An Environmental Reader for Writers